SUNRISE, Fla. — It was the first night of their most important homestand of the year and the final game before the trade deadline, and the Florida Panthers did not look like a team ready to gear up for a postseason push.
On the heels of an impressive win against the Tampa Bay Lightning and still playing without Aleksander Barkov for the third straight game, the Panthers stumbled through a lifeless first period Thursday and fell 2-1 to the trade-depleted Nashville Predators.
The loss keeps Florida (30-27-6) at least three points out of the second and final wild card with less than 20 games to go, and leaves the Panthers with an increasingly small margin for error to get to the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs. Whether it’s the final straw for general manager Bill Zito and Co. to decide to punt on this season will be seen Friday before the deadline arrives at 3 p.m.
Florida probably needs to win more than a third of its remaining games to make the Stanley Cup playoffs and has not proved at any point it’s capable of such a sustained run of success.
The Panthers have only once won at least three straight games this year — earlier this year and even those games were split up by the 2023 NHL All-Star Game — and they’ve promptly followed it up by losing 5 of 9, including their latest to the Predators (30-23-6) in Sunrise.
As it often has this season, Florida got in trouble because of penalties and was incapable of digging out of an early deficit. Defenseman Radko Gudas, a potential trade candidate, committed the first penalty of the game with 6:27 left in the first period and Nashville scored seven seconds later on a power play to go up 1-0.
The Panthers’ eight come-from-behind wins this year are tied for fewest in the NHL, so they were already in trouble. It got even bleaker with 10.2 seconds left in the period when Predators winger John Leonard scored after a delayed penalty to put Nashville up 2-0, prompting groans and scattered boos from the crowd at FLA Live Arena.
Florida has only one win this year when trailing by more than one goal and the Panthers never rallied to even tie the game, even after star defenseman Brandon Montour cut the Predators’ lead to 2-1 in the first four minutes of the second period. A second-period onslaught only got Florida the one goal — the Panthers outshot Nashville, 16-7, in the period — and the Predators ultimately fended off Florida after getting a chance to regroup at the second intermission. Nashville goaltender Kevin Lankinen stopped all seven shots in the third period, and 30 of 31 overall, and the Panthers suffered another crushing loss on home ice.
